I don’t know about any particular highs this weekend but here go the lows...

I cancelled plans that would be considered active and energetic and hence good, in favour of plans that were less energetic. *sigh*:o

It’s possibly irrelevant to most of you, but one of my favourite coffee shops has done a vanishing act!:((. The Barista on St. Mark’s road, the coffee shop with one of the nicest locations in town and the bestest, most conducive to wallowing in nostalgia brickwork has gone a-missing. The building is still there and there’s clearly renovation happening within it, but the coffee shop per se is not. It's gone lock, stock and tattered, aging, scrabble boards, and there’s nothing to tell you if they plan to return. I’m depressed. I’ve whiled away a lot of quality time there, with a lot of fine friends, including anupma and was looking forward to more of the same.

And ...I tripped over a speed-breaker in the lane near my house, had a near spectacular fall on a fine, hard road, and am now the proud possessor of two scraped knees and one scraped elbow, sundry minor twinges and a tendency to whine more than the usual quota. Sympathy, etc is welcomed, nay, demanded.

On the highs, the weather's lovely. There's a nip in the air, and an afternoon sun to wallow in.

Yesterday, we set out to climb this mountain. It's called Brahmagiri and it's in South Coorg, near the Kerala border. Those lines are apparently the border markings.



After trudging 7+ kms through coffee estates, grasslands, and woods, across streams, waterfalls and minor cascades, braving leeches and sundry other insect life, we reached the base of the peak. And then had to stop and turn back because these guys decided to have a bit of a party on the mountain.



First there were two of them, and then a mommy and her kid followed, so prudent minds terminated the journey, and once the camerawork was done, we set back. This is rather depressing. Much as the elephants might be impressive and all that, we still left the mountain unclimbed. *sigh*

( lots of pics under the cut )

So, I met a couple of friends at the old fav Oxford Bookstore Cha Bar on Sunday evening and had a great time. I would love to say I contributed greatly to a highly entertaining conversation that shifted indiscriminately from the four letter word that is work to holidays in China, Ladakh and Europe to apparel to some gaffe by some Miss something at some bimbo pageant to the sadness that is the Oxfor Bookstore to much else rather easily, my most pertinent contributions were as below:

“What do we eat?”

“Aren’t you guys eating anything?”

“The blueberry muffins here are the awesomest.”

“Ooohhhh! I want the green tea margarita.”

“Oooh! I’m feeling peckish. Ooh! There’s a potato and something thingy. Should I have the potato and something or a tried and tested corn and mushroom quiche?”

“I think I’ll have a corn and mushroom quiche.”

“Ow! This is guava juice. Where’s the green tea? Where’s the margarita? Yes I know they don't serve alcohol here, but still...*sob*”

“This corn and mushroom quiche is to die for."

“I'm still peckish. I think I’ll have a blueberry muffin.”

“There aren’t enough blueberries in this. The muffins in the Cha Bar in Madras are almost entirely blue in colour.”

“I’m thirsty. I’m going to have a cardamom tea.”

“Aren’t you guys eating anything? Try the potato and whatever thingy... it sounds nice.”

“The fries basket... the fries basket. You must have the fries basket.”

“Where was the margarita in the green tea margarita? We’ll stick to the rum tea next time.”

I’d sort of ended up skipping lunch, you see. I was also too hungry to click pics of any of the food.

In all the while I’ve been in Chennai through countless hopping visits on family holidays en route to elsewhere and through two jobs, the last two years that I spent there were probably the only time I ever, to some extent at least, liked being in the city.

And while I guess most of that was due to the old workplace, I think the only things that stopped me from actually proclaiming a liking for the place were - the weather (humid is a season!), the results of the last assembly election and that one huge negative of where I lived (and therefore, the awful commute it involved).

Getting from home to work or to the library or to anywhere where I could shop, watch movies, have a coffee, or even order a pizza (we were well outside city limits!) was a chore in itself, and actually involved 'planning'! The road I lived on was a stretch of national highway that was at best a country road masquerading as a 2 lane tar road, with potholes at regular intervals, frequented at all hours by trucks in all sizes and shapes at least one of which broke down at least once a day. Just reaching city limits could take the best part of an hour. I don’t need to describe what happened during the rains.

And then I moved to Bangalore.

And now the road outside my parents’ house is a 4 lane highway soon to become an 8 lane one, trucks are barred from 8 am to 9 pm and you can reach the city limits in 20 minutes. and this weekend, the weather there was slightly breezy, slightly cloudy and overall prety decent.

There is a lesson somewhere in all this, I’m sure. But I still don't want to return there.

This weekend and the days preceding it...

I met lots of people, heard a lot of other people talk, became the proud possessor of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink", ate much decent food, attended a party of sorts I hadn’t planned to attend which though turned out to be decent enough in that my colleague and I exchanged much interesting gossip and I discovered the wonder that is vodka + energy drink, had a productive shopping / window shopping outing on Saturday, got mildly drenched in a very heavy downpour on Comm. Street, wandered over to parts of Bangalore I last visited centuries ago, and expounded my not very flattering opinion on branded women’s western wear in India to someone who works in branded western wear in India (in my defense, he asked for it!) and reaffirmed my love for all things Cotton World. And all through varied between feeling only mildly depressed about life to feeling substantially depressed about life.

The above happened because of a seminar that got me out of office for two days. It was also across industry and clients so by virtue of having been in three agencies in three cities over the span of my now glorious career (I have had flatmates who have gasped when they’ve realised when I passed out and ergo how ancient, in their myopic eyes, I am) I managed to catch up with some old friends I was really glad to meet again, some non-friends I would have been happy never meeting again, some old boss types and clients it was nice chatting to and some old boss types and clients I would have happily avoided. It was good fun in part and some of the papers were really worth listening to. But then it got all depressing towards the end when when people started talking of “industry issues” because it doesn’t really help to reiterate that there are issues and then not come up with solutions, especially when everyone knows there’s one excellent solution, but no one wants to use that, and instead they leave you feeling like a fool for sticking on in the industry.

In addition I successfully avoided a party I didn’t want to attend because of acute displeasure with some of the attendees (the number of neurotic women in this city seems to increase daily), jogged plus walked 8.4 kms, met a few more people and had mucho enlightening conversations on breathing, sprinting and my favourite topic of my ever bruised toes, had an unproductive shopping / window shopping / library outing on Sunday, and didn’t work from home all through the weekend as I had ambitiously planned to.

And now I sit, returned fresh from the pointlessness of a HR workshop and wait for the rain to stop so I an go home or for the sandwich stall guy to pick his phone so I can appease hunger pangs, whichever happens first.